Officially official

After much thought about what to do and when to do it… finally, almost impulsively, I registered for the KC Marathon today. I had considered waiting until the last minute to do so, but decided to change my thinking a bit.

My greatest concern is running this distance while weighing too much. I think it’s too big a stress on anyone’s system to run marathon distance with too much extra weight. And I would hate have “He wanted to run a marathon, but died tryin'” on my gravestone. So I have been telling myself that the only way I will run this race is if I lose the weight first. Well here is the change in thinking… How about “The only way I will lose this weight is if I train for a marathon”…? Huh…? Pretty sneaky, eh…? ..or foolish… only time will tell. I just wanted to get it over with, save a little money by registering early and move on to the next phase.

Even though I have not been losing weight as fast as I want, I do seem to be deflating. I am wearing MUCH smaller pants now (down to a 34 from a high of 40 waistline), I don’t fill up quite as much of the mirror as I used to and I really feel good. There is no way that, if I eat right and continue my training, I CAN’T, eventually, lose weight. I just have to be patient.

See, the problem I was having is that I set a “go, no go” date of July 15 to commit to the marathon. My final deciding factor would have been my weight. If I was at or below 185, I would go for it. If not, I would wait until I hit 185 and THEN start looking for another marathon. The problem with this is that marathon training is weighted so that you run your longest distances in the last 2 1/2 months. This is also the time when you lose the most weight due to the increased miles. So I would have been cutting myself off at right about the same time I “potentially” would really have started to see some results. So, I flipped and flopped around trying to make a decision and finally went back to my own tag line for this blog… “Just pick a direction and go”. If I’m gonna do this, I need to just do it. And if, in the end, I don’t lose enough weight and don’t think it’s safe? I’m not stupid… I just won’t run or I will switch to a shorter race (which you can do up til the last 2 days).

What is “enough” weight? I don’t know… I guess I’ll tell you when I get there… Right now, it’s not important. I need to just focus on losing the next pound, running the next mile and eating the right food every day. That’s really all I can do. I’m not going to starve myself or injure myself. The race is a secondary thing. Losing the weight and getting back in shape, along with changing my lifestyle and exercising for life, are and always will be the, the most important things. The marathon is just a sick reward for putting in all the hard work. I still have one hot summer and over 500 miles to run BEFORE I get there. Let’s get that knocked out first.

Oh… and, by the way, they do use ChampionChip but will not have an online tracker. Which would have been fun…! I guess I’ll have to qualify for Boston if I want that… HAH! Oh.. and also… they ask you what your projected time is. I had to put something so I put 4:30.00.